Opinion - News Analysis   

Going beyond the most visible

K. Narayanan

The last column (March 3, 2008) touched upon some aspects of the work of the Readers’ Editor, thrown up in the two years this office has been functioning.

The limitations were explained. That would naturally lead to the question, posed by a sceptical reader: is the Readers’ Editor only a “glorified proof-reader”? V. Krishnamurthy (Srirangam, Tamil Nadu) raises this and some more points that need answers. My explanation may hardly convince him, because he had apprehensions, from Day One, on the ability of the Readers’ Editor to “really function as an ombudsman independent of the Editor or the Editorial Board.” He finds these “fears have come true.”

* * * 

First points first, on proof readers. There is a chronological error in the reader’s statement. A proof reader’s role is pre-production, not post. I come to the arena only after the printed paper is in the readers’ hands. That apart, the job of the proof reader, now an extinct species in newspapers, was no mean one. They ensured accuracy, which is the key to a newspaper’s credibility. I have personal experience of any number of instances where proof readers prevented major mishaps. Also when the Chief Proof Examiner, who had to see and pass the first printed copy, saved the paper from losing face. They did this when they were stuck in a post with no promotion avenues and had to fight a long legal battle to be categorised as journalists.

“Do we require an RE to admit to/correct such errors?” asks Krishnamurthy. Well, you may not need such a post, but owning up mistakes and openly acknowledging them requires courage. It is (or at least is meant to be) a cathartic process, a path for self-rectification. How many Indian newspapers other than The Hindu do it? There are at least some readers who recognise this and I will come to one presently.

* * * 

“Corrections and Clarifications” form only one part, although the most visible, of my work. And here I come to Krishnamurthy’s next point: “The selection of news items (and, therefore, I presume, its publication) is the responsibility of the Editor. If this is correct, should you not forward the queries and comments of the readers to the Editor and get his reactions? It is the Editor who should answer and clarify the points/doubts raised by the readers.”

As the imprint of the paper states, the Editor-in-Chief (“the boss,” in the reader’s words) is legally responsible for everything that appears in the paper. That does not mean, as Krishnamurthy proclaims, that “The Hindu seems to denote only the Editor-in-Chief and none else.” A newspaper is a collective effort and no one person can steer it alone. And every communication I receive from readers that makes a substantive point is forwarded to the Editor-in-Chief. Depending on the nature of the issue, I inform the reader of the response or use the comments in my columns. This is the raison d’etre for the post of the Readers’ Editor — a channel of communication between the reader and the Editor. If the Editor-in-Chief has to answer every point raised by readers, he can do little else.

* * * 

There are, happily for me, other views too. Says one reader: “I must tell you why I am writing to you. No newspaper I know has a readers’ editor. As a reader, I want to know the readers’ editor’s reaction.” But I could not meet the demand made by Vijay George, a first year B.Sc. student from Thiruvananthapuram. In rightful indignation, he sent me a report (from another newspaper) that he said propagated stereotypes of peoples and communities. He wanted to know how I would have reacted if The Hindu had a similar report “with funny, unwarranted and unedited details.”

I told Vijay George that I agreed with every point he made in his long communication, including the one that I would not comment on a report in another newspaper. I had enough of my own! I disagreed with only one of his points — that I do not get the kind of responses I would like to, from readers. Every communication from readers is interesting and informative, whatever be the tone. Most gratifying were the responses I got to my last column. I thank all these well-wishers.

* * * 

There is an unannounced, unmandated service that the Readers’ Editor’s office performs. The daily issue of The Hindu, at least the Chennai edition, carries no contact details such as telephone numbers or e-mail ids, the exception being the “Letters to the Editor” column and the “Open Page”. The contact details of the Readers’ Editor are appended to the “Corrections and Clarifications” column that appears five days a week. And so we get a variety of communications ranging from publication of city engagements to seeking jobs in the newspaper. We help all of them as best as we can, but there needs to be some institutional arrangement. I have suggested in internal notes that all relevant contact details — phone numbers, ids — should be part of the daily paper. There it remains.

* * * 

In the column of January 7, 2008, I dealt with readers’ protests against advertisements that occupy the full Page 1. Such advertisements had then appeared in the Tiruchirapalli and Kerala editions. I explained why this was done and how the market was dominated by buyers of space, and newspapers had to compete to sell this space. Similar protests erupted again when the Chennai city edition had an ad spread over the first two pages on February 29, 2008.

Apart from the previously heard points, a new one this time was: how is this different from the commercialisation of sport, as in the IPL (India Premier League) cricket, which the paper had criticised a week earlier? The comparison does not hold. The editorial pointed out that players had been transformed into money-making machines. The Board of Control, leaving aside its primary task of reforming traditional forms of domestic cricket, was putting commercial interests above everything else. But a newspaper is a commercial enterprise which has to sell itself and space in it, for it to survive, while retaining the principle of public service. It needs to do this if it is to produce serious, resourceful journalism, employ journalists and others, invest in infrastructure, physical and social, expand and diversify operations, develop new media activities, and so on.

The front page jacket advertisement did not reduce the regular space for news and did not deprive readers of any regular feature. As long as there is nothing offensive in the content, one cannot object to such advertisements, now seen in virtually all newspapers. There may be more of them, but they cannot be frequent because of the very high cost to the advertiser.

When another jacket advertisement appeared on March 8, 2008, reader B. Santhinathan (Chennai) put it aptly: You have reconciled [yourself to this], so too we.

readerseditor@thehindu.co.in

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